Of Smokeless Fire by A.A. Jafri (i wanna iguana read aloud TXT) 📕

where the majority of Ahmadis lived. Even though they were not Punjabis, they felt that this would be the only place where they would be safe. They had decided to stay there until the madness against their community calmed down. One station before Rabwah, when the train stopped, a group of madmen got in and dragged Sadiq off the train. They killed him on the platform of the railway station, right outside the train, in broad daylight. When Talat tried to intervene, they knocked her senseless. Anna had trunk-called Haider, who called her back using his office phone and got the details.

*

Noor, Haider and Zakir went to Rabwah and found Talat lying in a coma in a local hospital. They arranged to fly her back to Karachi, where the hospital facilities were much better, but a day after their arrival, she succumbed to her injuries. They could never find Sadiq Mirza’s body.

The seekers of Paradise were determined to create hell for anyone who competed with their cartelized truth. Their image of heaven, paved with the blood of heretics, included only their narrower sects, rejecting the rest of humanity. The god of their inheritance demanded blood, exacted revenge and promoted hate. It was a weak god with a small heart and a shrill voice.

*

Mansoor delayed his departure by a week, and Noor, upon his return from Rabwah, came back angrier and full of hate. He would have liked to find the perpetrators of this crime and bring them to justice. But justice in a poor country is subservient to the rich and powerful, and Barrister Noor ul Haq was well aware of that. Although he had fought and won many battles in the court of law, he knew that the odds of getting justice for Sadiq were almost zero. Even if the murderers confessed, no judge who feared the fanatics more than he feared his gods, would allow a conviction to happen.

With his father’s rage rising each day, Mansoor worried about how his mother would cope while he was away in America. How would his father muddle through? In Sadiq Mirza, Noor had found intellectual compatibility, despite his peccadilloes; it had always been a treat to hear him speak of Joyce and Woolf, Ghalib and Faiz. Away from the infuriating inanities of Pakistani politics, their discussions had always remained fascinating to Mansoor. Now his father’s future without his friend seemed intellectually barren. How would he be diminished by Sadiq’s death? Would he rage against his own survival? Would his death precipitate a crisis in him? Mansoor thought about all these questions with anxiety.

Just to be with his father for a little while longer, Mansoor delayed his departure by two more weeks. But that didn’t really make much of a difference. Noor had become more detached from his country. His sense of dislocation grew. More than ever, Noor now felt like he was living in a parallel universe, estranged from everything and anything. There were so many wrongs in his father’s life that a right could no longer be conceptualized. And then Mansoor began to feel sorry for both his parents. They were both alone in their disengaged worlds, fighting their lonely battles, clinging to their personal crutches. It was only recently that Farhat had found a soulmate in Talat. They shared their marital difficulties, revealed their hates and hurts and confided about their squabbles and sensitivities. Talat had, in a short time, become more of a sister to Farhat than Sarwat ever was. But now, her new friend was also dead.

*

Noor’s denunciations of the politics of the corrupt did not bother Mansoor as much as his inability to show his softer side. He had been listening to these denunciations ever since he could remember. It was as if his father’s relentless resort to logic had atrophied his heart muscles. Did he have his own emotional ethos where rage and disgust were attached effortlessly but love and empathy remained strenuously aloof?

On the day of Mansoor’s departure, Noor was like that fluorescent light in their garage which, when turned on, flickered for a moment and then dimmed out. With a poker face and stony eyes, he bade his son goodbye, and that was all. No hugs, no handshakes, no tears. Farhat, on the other hand, was an emotional wreck. She cried all day, hugging Mansoor tightly and slobbering him with kisses, while Noor rebuked her for making a scene. Neither came to see him off at the airport. It was Sikander who dropped him off at the terminal, gave him a hug and cried irrepressibly.

As Mansoor sat on the airplane, he bade farewell to a life that had come to a close. Going on an epistemic journey of loneliness, to a world different in age and temperament, where he knew not a soul, his heart sank as the airplane ascended into the dark sky. Mansoor remembered when the travel agent had asked him if he wanted a one-way ticket or a return. Of course, he could not buy his return ticket now since he did not know anything about his return trip. He did not know when he would return home. But does one ever return home? Aren’t all of us on a one-way ticket, going to a place of no return? What was the point of returning home, anyway? To recondition our past? To complete the miserable circle of our miserable lives? Odysseus returned to Ithaca after ten years, but he never came home. Getting depressed, Mansoor closed his eyes and thought about Mehrun.

Twenty

It was not until after Mehrun had arrived in Dubai that the reality of her sham marriage kicked in. The first week, they stayed at the Hotel InterContinental in a room with two double beds; she slept on one and he on the other. And the first night, when she tried to crawl into his bed, he rudely sent her back. His apathy towards intimacy had shocked her. She felt cheap and used. Was it her? Was she